Established Regulations of the Daoist Community道门定制
- Author / transmission
- lü-yuansu
- Period
- Southern Song · Compiled by Lü Yuansu (active in the late 12th century), with a preface dated to the fifteenth year of the Chunxi era (1188), later supplemented by Jiang Shuyu and others.
- Canon division
- Zhengyi Section
- Collected in
- Daoist Canon of the Zhengtong Era, Zhengyi Section
- Category
- Ritual Protocol (Keyi)
- Fascicles
- 10 juan
Synopsis
The Established Regulations of the Daoist Community is a compendium of retreat and offering documents and ritual regulations compiled by Lü Yuansu of the Southern Song, in ten juan, aiming to standardize the format and use of the various documents used in the retreat and offering rituals of the Daoist community of the time — memorials, petitions, dispatches, communications, and talismanic mandates. The work includes formats for memorials submitted to the Three Pure Ones, the Jade Emperor, and the various celestial bureaus, model texts of memorial documents, proclamations, and petitions for various retreats and offerings, and explanations of the procedures for establishing the altar, submitting memorials, announcing the text, and presenting petitions, together with a critical discussion of the mixing of Lingbao, Tianxin, and other ritual methods. The work reflects the bureaucratization of Southern Song retreat and offering institutions — modeling the administration of the celestial court on the human bureaucratic document system — and is an important source for the study of Daoist documentary practice, the institution of memorials, and the pattern of religious bureaucracy in the Song; it is used alongside the Great Rites of Shangqing Lingbao and the Golden Book of Salvation.
Key Ideas
- Standardizing the formats of retreat and offering documents
- Memorials and petitions modeled on official government documents
- Regulation of retreat and offering procedures
- The bureaucratization of Song-dynasty Daoism
Structure
Ten juan, arranged by document category and ritual procedure.
Editions
- Daoist Canon of the Zhengtong Era edition
- Zhonghua Daozang, vol. 42
Full Text & Online Resources
Related scriptures
Great Rites of Shangqing Lingbao (Jin Yunzhong), Complete Collection of Daoist Ritual Protocols, Jade Mirror of LingbaoRelated figures
lü-yuansu, Jiang Shuyu- 任继愈主编《道藏提要》
- Judith Boltz, A Survey of Taoist Literature, 1987